In my city, cash businesses are the first to be knocked over for drug money, so increasingly more and more businesses are forced to go cashless. By forcing all businesses to accept cash, this would re-spread the risk of armed robbery or burglary around.
D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect
41–50 of 508 posts
Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not viable nor the responsibility of an individual business.
Businesses have a legal obligation to not discriminate against lots of recognized classes. Those without credit cards should be protected as well, because living in this country should not require you to participate in a debt-based system. If it did, it would be government of banks, not a democracy. Forcing people to have a bank account or a credit card to buy food enforces a monopoly on money.
>Forcing people to have a bank account or a credit card to buy food enforces a monopoly on money.
And allowing businesses to not accept cash allows them to streamline operations and offering products/services at a lower price.
What does monopoly on money mean? Why didn’t Washington DC go out and invest in infrastructure to take cash from people and give them debit cards?
Because that would leave the politicians more liable and the costs are easily visible. Much easier for them to punt the responsibility and costs to a small portion of the voting populace.
Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not viable nor the responsibility of an individual business.
Businesses have a legal obligation to not discriminate against lots of recognized classes. Those without credit cards should be protected as well, because living in this country should not require you to participate in a debt-based system. If it did, it would be government of banks, not a democracy. Forcing people to have a bank account or a credit card to buy food enforces a monopoly on money.
It’s an expensive burger restaurant, not a grocery store. Having a bank account and a debit card doesn’t mean “participating in a debt-based system”.
Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect
#44Instead of banning cashless businesses because it's discriminatory to the unbanked perhaps they should focus on reducing discrimination in the banking sector and providing a publicly run electronic payment system.
The answer to unfairness is not let the government take it over. That is unless you want to raise costs for everyone, eliminate all competition, and end up with the same institutional problems.
Note that I'm not suggesting we eliminate private credit creation or that the government issue loans, what I'm advocating is a government supplied and run electronic payment system.
They already supply a payment system (cash), it's just not electronic. Last time I checked we're not hurting for lack of competition in the "minting currency" industry, and in fact when this was competitive (ie. before the Federal Reserve was formed) the US was a total shit show and it couldn't get anything done.
Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Make access to a bank account a right. Take all of the unbanked/unprofitable customers and assign them to banks weighted by each bank’s market share. No matter their Chexsystems report status.
Another move in the wrong direction. Why should private businesses be selectively shouldering the burden of society? Mandate the USPS (federal government) to offer electronic money accounts to everyone.
This is done several other industries. Hospital emergency departments cannot refuse critical care. Most states mandate carrying car insurance and also have an assigned risk pool of last resort for people who cannot get a policy normally.
The benefit of a service mandate on private businesses is that it avoids having to set up a government retail-facing firm. Starting a public option is re-inventing the wheel. Either it stays starved of funding so it sucks, or it gets momentum and existing firms complain about unfair competition from the government.
Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect
#46Please do this state-wide in California. Or hell, nation-wide in US.
Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect
#47Interesting. I get why you'd want to ban cashless business, but many business in a nearby town with a high crime rate are going cashless because you can't rob a Square reader quite as easily as a cash register.
The answer to that is to help your citizens so they don't need to rob a Shake Shack, not to exclude even more people from enjoying Shake Shack while going surveillance mode on everyone's calorie intake
Shake Shack does not have the capacity to help a society. They do the only thing they can to in their power - remove the incentive for stealing.
It is up to the gov't to enact policies (carrot or stick) to prevent robberies.
Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect
#48I have no dog in this fight as I rarely deal with cash and do not run a retail business. However from a conceptual point of view I really have a viscerally negative reaction to not accepting cash. It is a societal acceptance of the rent seeking behavior of the credit processing networks. I already have to pay a sales tax to ${TAX_ENTITIES.length} different government entities, I don't love that I also have a 3% tax g…
Visa gets 1% and the bank gets the rest actually. Which they use to fund cash back programs...
Besides the point but visa actually gets about 0.14%
Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answer to unfairness is not let the government take it over. That is unless you want to raise costs for everyone, eliminate all competition, and end up with the same institutional problems.
Note that I'm not suggesting we eliminate private credit creation or that the government issue loans, what I'm advocating is a government supplied and run electronic payment system. They already supply a payment system (cash), it's just not electronic. Last time I checked we're not hurting for lack of competition in the "minting currency" industry, and in fact when this was competitive (ie. before the Federal Reserve…
FedNow is a payment system by the government providing the rails, but we'll have to see how it evolves. Zelle's implementation/rollout, which is a similar product, but owned/operated by the banks/corporations, has been messy. Venmo, and CashApp, however, are fairly popular.
Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect
#50Interesting. I get why you'd want to ban cashless business, but many business in a nearby town with a high crime rate are going cashless because you can't rob a Square reader quite as easily as a cash register.
I know a business that went cash-only for the same reason in reverse: the thieves were doing it via chargebacks saying they never heard of the place. Couldn't win disputes even with video evidence. They put in an ATM, can't charge that back.
You can accept debit cards and not accept credit cards. That is actually really common in Europe. Chargebacks for most CC providers are around $50-$100 now, so you can do it for small items, I wonder who uses cash to buy something that would make a chargeback worthwhile for a thieve? They would have to rotate cards around to get that.
More likely, thieves were using stolen cards, and the chargebacks were probably legitimate (a thief trying to make money on a chargeback would be pretty dumb anyways, since it would be tracked back to their identity regardless, and the bank would shut them down quickly they made an unusual habit of it).